Strangers

out there for fifty bucks?"
        The kid knew how to hurry. If he had not been a superb driver, he would have fishtailed out of control and spun them off the road into trees or ditches on a half-dozen tight turns, for he got all possible speed out of the big Fury. After they came through the third sharp turn alive, Parker knew he was in good hands, and he finally relaxed a bit.
        At the airport, he bought a ticket for one of two remaining seats on a West Air flight leaving for San Francisco in ten minutes. He boarded the plane, half-expecting it to be halted by federal agents before it could take off. But soon they were airborne, and he could worry about something else: getting another flight from San Francisco to Reno before they tracked him that far.
        

        
        Jack Twist went through the Blocks' apartment from north- to west- to south- to east-facing windows, surveying the vast landscape for signs of the enemy's observation post or posts. At least one surveillance team would be watching the motel and diner, and no matter how well concealed they were, he had a device that would pinpoint their location.
        He'd brought it from New York with the other gear-an instrument the armed forces called the HS101 Heat Analyzer. It was shaped like a sleek futuristic raygun from the movies, with a single two-inch-diameter lens instead of a barrel. You held it by the butt and looked through the eyepiece as if peering into a telescope. Moving the viewfinder across the landscape, you saw two things: an ordinary magnified image of the terrain, and an overlaid representation of heat sources within that terrain. Plants, animals, and sun-baked rocks radiated heat, but thanks to microchip technology, the HS101's computer could differentiate among types of thermal radiation and screen out most natural background sources. The device would show only heat from living sources larger than fifty pounds: animals bigger than house-dogs and human beings. Even if they were out there in insulated ski suits that trapped a lot of body heat, enough would escape their garments to give him a fix on them.
        Jack spent a considerable length of time studying the land north of the motel, through which he had approached the place last night, but finally he decided no one was watching from that direction, and he moved to the west-facing windows in other rooms. The west also looked clear, so he went next to the windows on the south side of the apartment.
        Marcie had colored the last moon in her album, and when Jack set out with the HS101 to look for surveillance teams, she came with him, staying close by his side. Maybe she had taken a liking to him because he'd spent hours talking to her in spite of her failure to respond. Or maybe she was scared of something and felt safer in his presence. Or another reason too strange to imagine. He could do nothing for her except keep talking softly to her as she accompanied him.
        Jorja followed along as well, and though she did not interrupt with questions, she was considerably more distracting than her daughter. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, but more importantly he liked her a lot. He thought she liked him, too, although he didn't suppose she was attracted to him, not in the man-woman sense. After all, what would a woman like her see in a guy like him? He was an admitted criminal, and he had a face like an old battered shoe, not to mention one cast eye. But they could be friends, at least, and that was nice.
        At the living room windows, he finally spotted what he was seeking: points of body heat out there in the cold barrens. Across the top of the image that filled the lens - Nevada plains and overlaid heat patterns - came a digital readout of data that told him there were two sources of heat, that they were due south of his position, and that they were approximately four-tenths of a mile away. That information was followed by numerals that represented an estimation of the size of each source's radiant surface, which told him he had found two men. He switched off the HS's heat-analysis function and turned up the magnification, using the device as a simple telescope, zeroing in on the area in which the heat had been detected. He had to search for a couple of minutes, for they were wearing camouflage suits.
        "Bingo," he said at last.
        Jorja did not ask what he saw, for she had learned well the lesson he had taught them last night: